Using a PDA in your Personal Practice

1
Using a PDA in your Personal Practice

• American Academy of Pediatrics
• 2002 NCE
• Doug Stetson MD FAAP

2
What is a PDA Good For?

• Goals
• Practice quality
• Patient safety
• Efficiency
• Convenience

3
What is it Good For?

• Goals
• Practice quality
• Patient safety
• Efficiency
• Convenience

• Tools
• Reference material
• Access to patient information
• Clinical and administrative record keeping
• Prescription writing

4
Demographics of Private Practice

• Half of physicians practice in groups of 1 or 2
• Is that true among our group?
• Who is marketing their PDA tools to you?

5
Follow the Money

• Dot.bust in Silicon Valley
• Reduced corporate IT spending
• Reduced venture capital expenditures

6
Follow the Money

• Dot.bust in Silicon Valley
• Reduced corporate IT spending
• Reduced venture capital expenditures
• Cost of sale is nearly as large for a solo
  practitioner as for a group of 25, or 100
• Installation as hard for a small practice as a
  large one
• Much less progress in tools that a physician can
  use independently

7
Fiscal REALITY

• Five robust prescription writers reduced to one
• Very few companies competing for your attention
• Those that are left may not last
• The specter of HIPAA
• The developers are quite wary

8
A Day in the Life of the Independent Pediatrician

• AM / PM hospital rounds
• Administrative, clinical, fiscal and reference
  tools
• Morning / afternoon clinic
• Administrative, clinical, fiscal and reference
  tools
• During Free Time
• Review labs, renew prescriptions, check e-mail
• Away from the office
• Clinical, reference, prescribing and
  documentation tools

9
Introducing the Players

• Software
• ePocrates www.epocrates.com
• PatientKeeper www.patientkeeper.com
• Allscripts www.allscripts.com
• Medical Manager www.medicalmanager.com
• Axolotl www.axolotl.com
• Also
• PDAMD www.pdamd.com
• Skyscape www.skyscape.com

10
Introducing the Players

• Hardware
• Palm OS PDAs lots of brands
• Pocket PC PDAs lots of brands
• Some (of each) include cell phones
• Some (of each) include wireless communication

11
Selecting Hardware

• Get the OS that supports the software you want
• Check out the screen for readability
• Your colleagues are your support group try to
  use what they have

12
A Day in the Life of the Independent Pediatrician

• Hospital rounds before clinic
• A rounding tool with current information?
• A tool to capture professional charges?
• A reference tool?

13
A Day in the Life of the Independent Pediatrician

• Morning clinic
• A handheld clinical data display that avoids a
  chart pull?
• A pocket reference to assist decision making?
• A tool to minimize prescription writing errors?
• A tool to increase and speed collections?
• A tool to enhance patient education?

14
Lunchtime

• Can you recharge the battery before your first
  afternoon patient?
• Can you put this thing down to leave the office
• Or is it your pager, your cell, and your email?
• E-mail a few patients
• Review some labs
• Refill some prescriptions

15
Afternoon and Evening

• Same as the morning -- then
• Off at your daughters soccer match
• A page or cell call
• Review clinical data?
• Send a prescription wirelessly?
• Keep a record of your actions
• Update the clinical record in the end?

16
In Summary

• Tools exist you can have now
• Theyre free (or nearly so)
• Theyre helpful
• They run on Palm OS (mostly)
• Eventually people will market to you take
  advantage of the tools as they become available